Cowboys’ Staubach rallies Exchange Club to record Goodfellows gift: $210,000

It took some classic last-minute theatrics from an old Dallas Cowboys football playbook, but civic leaders of the Exchange Club of Fort Worth raised a record $210,000 Wednesday for the Star-Telegram Goodfellow Fund.

With only a few minutes left in the club’s 82nd annual charity holiday luncheon and servers clearing the steaks and pecan pie, the downtown businessmen’s club had raised barely half the money needed to help buy school clothes and shoes for local poor children.

But their guest speaker came through in the clutch, just like Roger Staubach did for two Super Bowl championship Cowboys teams.

Staubach, 75, offered to auction autographed footballs. He signed the first and tossed a perfect spiral across the Fort Worth Club meeting room to the buyer: investor Lee Bass.

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Then emcee and “chief extractor” George Young Jr. shouted “Shut the doors!” and ratcheted down the pressure on the 135 business leaders.

Within 15 minutes, Young and Staubach had shattered the old record of $161,000 and banked enough checks and pledges to buy clothes and shoes for 4,200 children.

“This may be the greatest ‘Hail Mary’ pass ever for the Goodfellows,” said Goodfellow Fund executive director Richard Greene, referring to Staubach’s game-winning touchdown pass against the Minnesota Vikings in a 1975 playoff game. Staubach, a Roman Catholic, told reporters afterward he just “said a ‘Hail Mary,’” and the term caught on.

In place of the club’s traditional comedy roast of risque skits and funny hats, BNSF Railway Co. executive chairman Matthew Rose interviewed Staubach before a record luncheon crowd.

Staubach said fans in Minnesota still haven’t forgotten the “Hail Mary” victory there against the heavily favored Vikings.

A few years ago, he spoke at a chamber of commerce luncheon and “I got booed,” he said.

“Now they’re going to have the Super Bowl up there, and they still will not get over it.”

After the game, he told a reporter that when he threw a deep sideline pass to Cowboys receiver Drew Pearson, “I just closed my eyes and said a ‘Hail Mary.’”

Young, in the role created by original emcee J.A. “Tiny” Gooch and polished by 20-year emcee Edward “Buzz” Kemble, reserved the jokes for new members Barclay Berdan, John Boswell, Baker Gentry, Tom Puff and Billy Rosenthal.

About Bud Kennedy

Bud Kennedy is a homegrown Fort Worth guy who started out covering high school football here when he was 16. He went away to the Fort Worth Press and newspapers in Austin and Dallas, then came home in 1981.

Since 1987, he's written more than 1,000 weekly dining columns and more than 3,000 news and politics columns. If you don't like what he says about politics, read him on barbecue.